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PRODUCTION / FUNDING Belgium / France

Des gens bien starts shooting

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- The new series from the creators behind the successful French-language Belgian series The Break is the first ever series co-produced by the RTBF and Arte

Des gens bien starts shooting
The series creators Benjamin d'Aoust, Matthieu Donck and Stéphane Bergmans (© Aurore Engelen)

Shooting began last week on the 6x52’ series Des gens bien, imagined by Matthieu Donck, Benjamin d’Aoust and Stéphane Bergmans, the creative trio behind The Break, the 100% Belgian and 100% noir series that marked the return of the genre in French-speaking Belgium in early 2016.

To fully understand the magnitude of the event, one must know that although the series industry has been flourishing in Flanders for several years now, it has been seriously moribund in French-language Belgium, especially when it comes to drama series. The creation of the RTBF/Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles Series Fund in 2013 aimed to compensate for this deficiency and to bring quality prime time series on the screens of the public channel within a few years, while developing a real industry that would benefit the sector players, from producers, auteurs and actors to technicians.

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Released in February 2016, The Break, the very first series coming out of this fund, was met with immediate success, reconciling the public of the RTBF with its territory, its characters and its stories. The series indeed was prolonged for a second season, a testament to its success.

Since then, its auteurs have started on a new adventure, Des gens bien, a new series that will be a milestone, if only for the fact that it will be the first co-production between the RTBF and Arte. Carried by Hélicotronc in Belgium and Unité in France, the series tells the story of Tom and Linda Leroy, a couple of thirty-somethings in debt who decide to set up a life insurance scam in order to get the money and start a new life in the sun. The series also follows Philippe, a cop who could have stopped everything, and Cathy, an insurance broker who will investigate come hail or high water; their small border community, left aside by modernity, that refuses to see the evil that is gnawing at it; these good people who didn’t mean to hurt anybody.

In the cast, we find again Lucas Meister (who appeared in The Break 2), Bérangère Mc Neese (recently in the hit HPI on TF1), but also Peter Van den Begin (King Nicolas in King of the Belgians [+see also:
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and The Barefoot Emperor [+see also:
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interview: Jessica Woodworth
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), India Hair (recently in Mandibles [+see also:
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) and Michaël Abiteboul (who we will see in Bac Nord [+see also:
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soon), and prestigious guests such as Bouli Lanners (who we will see this year in Love Songs for Tough Guys [+see also:
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interview: Samuel Benchetrit
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and Nobody Has to Know [+see also:
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interview: Bouli Lanners
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]
) or François Damiens (also in Love Songs for Tough Guys).

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(Translated from French)

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